Growing Things

Mile Log: 510

"Fair fresh leaves and buds - and buds - tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. Colin saw it all, watching each change as it took place... He would lie on the grass 'watching things growing,' he said. If you watched long enough, he declared, you could see buds unsheath themselves..." 

Today Hannah was working in the garden. Yes, we now have a garden. Well, we have a garden-in-process - plants, flowers, and trees, aaand a bird bath. So Hannah was digging and planting today, and I wanted to somehow be a part of it. I've been reading The Secret Garden with much delight and nostalgia lately, and it makes me want to be outside in the fresh air and the smells of and colors of growing things. I love Colin and Mary and Dickon and the robin, and I love how Colin gets to enjoy the garden in a special way, sitting and laying and watching and smelling and listening so intently. So Hannah helped me out of my chair and onto a picnic blanket on the grass, and I spent a glorious afternoon surrounded by the intoxicating perfume of gardenias and lilacs and newly cut grass and rich moist earth, and basking in the feel of warm sunshine and the sound of birds singing and bees buzzing, and gazing at the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, and the splashes of marvelous color poking out of the ground at eye-level with me. It was beautiful... I breathed deeply, big gulps of air so that the springtime would fill my being. I felt strong, alive, full of beauty and magic... And like Colin, this spring I will watch things growing.